


Family Pre-Union

by TAFKAB



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, I am assuming Trelane is a Q, Kid Fic, M/M, Time Travel, parent's day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 20:25:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/TAFKAB
Summary: The command triumvirate learn something unexpected about themselves when their old friend Trelane from the Q continuum decides to celebrate Parents' Day.





	Family Pre-Union

**Author's Note:**

> For the McSpirk Holiday Fest Parents' Day 2017 event
> 
> Prompt: can we dig into tropes of the (not-so) distant past and tap into the fount that is “we’re not even dating but our kid(s) from the future just showed up”

Interdimensional cross-rifts, time travel anomalies, alien cultures with chips on their collective shoulders, semi-omnipotent entities with an eternity of boredom on their hands who decided to play games with the Enterprise crew just to relieve the tedium… it was all becoming commonplace. Scotty had started making book on it, creating a complicated random-scenario generator with the ship’s computer and taking bets on which possibility was most likely to happen next, but this one defied the capacity of even the best Federation algorithms to generate.

It was probably the work of some kind of omnipotent multidimensional meddler like Trelane, damn it. They never had resolved things adequately with the meddlesome bastard, and he kept popping up every now and then in different guises just to be a properly infuriating gadfly. 

It started when the transporter randomly activated one day and a little girl materialized on the pad. She was a pretty thing: jet black hair in pony tails, tilted eyes, and a sweet smile, with a toy Enterprise clutched in her fist. She said her name was Demora and asked for Lieutenant Sulu, and when he was produced, she attached herself to his hand with all the tenacity of a limpet and called him “papa.” 

Sulu turned a little green-- McCoy was lucky enough to be on the bridge that day and got to witness the carnage-- but Sulu tried his best to take it in stride, comforting her and taking care of her. Eventually the lieutenant regained enough composure to think, and he asked her some of his urgent questions on the way down to sickbay. 

“I don’t even know a Ben,” Hikaru muttered at McCoy as he scanned Demora, who presented as a perfectly healthy human child with half her DNA from Hikaru Sulu. “Who the hell’s Ben?”

“Might be fun finding out.” McCoy regretted he didn’t have any candy to offer her; he’d always kept sweets to pacify children in a drawer in his practice back home. He thought of Jocelyn. “Then again, maybe not.”

Next came a beautiful little boy with midnight-dark skin, asking for Uhura-- and didn’t that just cause a fuss? Worst of all, he had distinctly human, rounded ears. McCoy’s scans revealed he was 100% human. He called himself “Aijeba,” which Nyota refused to translate. She wouldn’t make eye contact with Spock after she and the child left sickbay together, but excused herself politely and led her putative son toward the commissary. 

If she asked the little boy the same things Sulu had asked Demora, McCoy wasn’t around to hear it.

“Jim, we’re going to need to set up some kind of daycare and sleeping facility for these kids until we can figure out how to send them home,” McCoy called the bridge. “I figure we haven’t seen the end of this.”

He was right. Within 24 hours they had thirty-four children aboard and were still counting. The new arrivals all appeared to be between four and ten years of age and none appeared to have been born prior to the present stardate. 

That meant Joanna probably wasn’t going to turn up, McCoy figured. He wasn’t sure whether he was sad or relieved by the prospect.

“Are they even real?” Sulu asked, worried, at the emergency command staff meeting Jim convened in an effort to come up with a strategy for dealing with the influx of children. “I mean, what if they’re not actually time travelers? They might be shapeshifting aliens and this could be the spearhead of some sort of invasionary attack. Or what if they are real, but they aren’t from our timeline? How will we know where to send them back to?”

“We can’t just keep them,” Uhura leaned forward, urgent. “They have lives and families and homes to return to.”

“Perhaps this is merely coincidental,” Spock noted, serene as a stuffed frog. “But the calendar date corresponds to the Terran holiday ‘Parents’ Day,’ created from the consolidation of gendered holidays honoring parents shortly after the first world government convened.”

“Then their parents will be missing them,” Uhura scowled at him.

“It appears the crew _are_ their parents,” Spock said, unruffled as ever, and her scowl deepened. 

“Are they?” McCoy balked against the pronouncement automatically. “The children may be genetically similar to their ‘parents’ amoung the crew, but our crew don’t have the memories parents have. They never engaged in the act of sexual contact, or parthenogenesis, or cloning, or any other reproductive act that produced the children, and they haven’t gone through legal channels to acquire them. I think you could make a very good argument against automatically assigning parental statu--”

“Keptin,” Chekov’s thick Russian burr erupted from the intercom, making half the assembled crewmen flinch. “I think you had better come down to Transporter Room Three.”

McCoy and Spock made it their business to come along as all the others dispersed to their stations. 

The little boy on the transporter pad scowled at the group who trooped in, his jaw setting fiercely under a mop of platinum blond curls. “I want my mother. Where is she?”

“Who’s your mother?” Jim asked him.

“Dr. Carol Marcus,” the child said, defensive, stabbing a finger toward Chekov. “That guy says she’s not here. Where is she?”

Jim went as white as a sheet; after a second he stepped forward to lead the little boy off the transporter pad, but the kid wouldn’t follow. “Is your name David?” Jim ventured.

“Yeah. Who are you?” Pugnacious, the child tipped up his chin. McCoy already had his scanner in hand. 

“Uh, Jim, I’m gonna need to do some further genetic testing, but--”

“Stow it, doctor.” Kirk snapped the command in haste. 

“Who _are_ you?” The child was arrogant as all hell and not a bit frightened.

“I’m Captain James Tiberius Kirk,” Jim said slowly. 

“Oh. _him._ ” Contempt dripped from the young voice; McCoy estimated David Marcus was the eldest arrival yet, at about 13 years of age. “Starfleet’s poster boy.”

“That’s me.” Jim’s voice hardened. “Bones, take David to sickbay and ensure he’s healthy, then have him join the others. I have an urgent comm call to make.” He vanished like his feet were on fire and his trousers were catching.

McCoy exchanged a long glance with Spock, who raised a brow but said nothing. 

“Come on, David,” McCoy said after a moment. “I’m Leonard McCoy. I’m a doctor. I’ll check you out to make sure you’re healthy, then see about getting you something to eat.” 

“I don’t need a checkup. I’m just fine.” David glowered at Leonard, folding his arms across his skinny chest.

“Come along or go hungry.” McCoy turned, making a fine show of indifference, and started to stroll out.

Faced with the failure to remain the center of attention paired with the threat of missing out on a meal, David followed close on his heels, complaining loudly. “I don’t need any injections. I’ve had all my school injections!”

“Like father, like son,” McCoy muttered, keying the turbolift.

*****

“Carol says David is in his room, sleeping. He’s three.” Jim spoke stiffly, not willing to be more forthcoming than that. 

“He’s also here, and he’s thirteen.” Bones shrugged, showing open palms. “He’s definitely yours, Jim. My observations indicate he’s fine, except that he shares a malady common to most thirteen-year-old boys: he’s a self-centered little jerk who still hasn’t figured out how to cope with his own testosterone. That’s the only thing wrong with him.” He moved on hastily as Jim glared at him with blood in his eye.

“So, 49 children have turned up so far, all of them… related to someone aboard the Enterprise. And we have more arriving once or twice an hour. Eventually we’re bound to run out of children.”

“It is likely there are a finite number of offspring that will be produced by the crew of the USS Enterprise,” Spock interposed smoothly. “However, the total number might be significantly higher than it may initially seem. Lieutenant M’Ress, for example, may produce as many as 4-5 offspring per gestation period, and she is capable of gestating approximately twice per year. Some other races--”

“Enough, Spock.” Kirk quieted him with a gesture. “We haven’t even established if all the offspring in question are actual or theoretical, though some do appear to be actual.” 

“What if we can’t send them back? They’re ours. We can’t raise them on board a starship. But they have to have parents.” Sulu’s face pinched with distress. “Some of us don’t even have partners to send them home to.” 

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not ready to be a mother.” Uhura’s eyes sparkled with tears. “It isn’t that I don’t care about Aijeba. I do… I love him already. He’s a miracle I can’t even begin to understand. But I have my career. My plans. My…” she glanced at Spock. “My own life in the here and now. I hadn’t thought seriously about having a child yet. Now I may be expected to give up my position for the next eighteen years to see to his well-being. What’ll be left for me to do after that? Not that I wouldn’t, and I know I’d be rewarded ten times over watching him grow up. But I wasn’t ready.”

“We don’t always get to decide when children will come along,” Jim said quietly. “Or even what to do with them afterward.” He caught McCoy’s eye for a moment. “But yes. Wherever and whenever they wind up, they’ll need to be cared for. We need to do better right now, in fact, than a group dormitory under the nurses’ supervision. For the moment, when not on duty each individual should be responsible for his or her own offspring. Keep them away from dangerous or classified areas, but keep them entertained and fed. Return them to the dormitory when you go on shift--”

“Dr. McCoy.” Chekov’s voice crackled from the loudspeaker. “To the transporter room, please.”

“Well, at least I know who’s waiting for me,” Bones joked, a spring in his step as he set out. 

*****

“Daddy!” At first he didn’t think it was Joanna at all, just a pretty young woman in a lab coat. But then she tilted her head and he could see Jocelyn in her so strongly his heart broke, so he bolted forward to wrap her in his arms, his eyes filling with tears. “Jo!”

“Oh, daddy, you look so young!” Joanna held him away from her, beaming.

So did she, truth be told-- fresh out of college maybe, bright-eyed and eager, but oh so much older than his little toddler the last time he’d seen her in pigtails and a romper, holding her mama’s hand-- about three years ago.

“Trelane said you’d be glad to see me.” She touched his cheek gently. “But he didn’t say you’d cry.”

“Trelane, huh?”

“It figures.” Jim strode in firmly. “Good morning, Jo. ...Miss McCoy,” he amended, taking her in with surprise.

“Hello, Daddy Jim.” Joanna beamed at him like a sunrise and rushed over to plant an exuberant kiss on Kirk’s face. “It’s good to see you!”

Jim sputtered a little, but kept admirable composure-- better than McCoy. Leonard felt like an egg smashed open on a sidewalk, equal parts shock (the yolk) and mortification (the egg-white). You could’ve scraped him up with a spatula. ‘Daddy Jim?!’ Uncle Jim, sure, but _Daddy Jim?_

“Trelane, yes. He’s part of an alien race called the Q.” Joanna nodded decisively, unaware of the consternation she’d caused. “This is his idea of a joke… and a gift of sorts, to make up for giving you such a hard time before. He calls it a family pre-union, and he’s promised he’ll return us all to our proper places when it’s finished.” Spock chose that moment to arrive, and Joanna swept over to him eagerly as well, rising up on tiptoe and planting a kiss right on his cheek. 

_“Dif-tor heh smusma, sa-mekh,”_ she said in fluent Vulcan, then gazed up at him for a moment, watching his face freeze into an expressionless rictus. “Oh dear. Have I made a _faux pas?”_

“The hell did that mean?” McCoy hissed to Kirk, who shushed him with a sweep of his flattened palm. 

_“Sochya eh dif,”_ Spock managed to articulate, pulling back and offering the _ta’al_. 

“He also said something about ‘hitting a few stubborn idiots with a clue stick.’” Joanna returned the formal Vulcan greeting as she gazed between their three faces-- McCoy’s sagging jaw, Jim’s wide eyes, and Spock’s frozen reserve. “Um. Apparently that was my job.” She grinned, apologetic. “Sorry. Looks like this is earlier in the timeline than I thought.”

“There have been plenty of clue sticks to go around,” Jim observed, dry. “But it’s good to have some idea what’s going on and how it will be resolved. Won’t you come with us?” He gave Bones a level look, warning polite caution.

The three of them escorted Joanna to sickbay, where she checked out just like all the others: healthy as a horse, everything perfectly as it should be for a daughter of McCoy’s-- if she were twenty-six. 

“We cannot afford to take these people or their words at face value,” Spock said. He still looked fairly green around the edges from being kissed. “Trelane can create extremely persuasive illusions.”

“Perhaps he also has the power to do exactly as Miss McCoy claims.” Jim stared at nothing, looking extremely thoughtful. 

McCoy looked up from his terminal, where he was clandestinely looking up Joanna’s addition to the formal Vulcan greeting: ‘Father.’ It just _figured._

“If he has that kind of power, then we’ve no alternative but to ride this out and see what happens.” 

“I’m afraid so,” Jim sighed. “Let’s get down and see what else he has planned.”

Trelane’s idea of a family-pre-union-cum-parents’-day-celebration apparently included plenty of stereotypes: crepe paper streamers and pastel balloons, badly wrapped handmade gifts, and a multi-layered vanilla cake with thick buttercream frosting, served with strawberry ice cream and champagne flutes full of sparkling grape juice. Even the children were mostly appalled by the sheer sentimental kitsch of it all.

“I made this when I was a _baby,_ ” David groaned, highly offended by the clay ashtray Jim unearthed out of an awkward snarl of tissue and ribbons. “And I bet you don’t even _smoke.”_

“The cologne is very nice, Demora.” Sulu pulled out the bottle-- at least a quart of a highly dubious amber fluid labeled ‘Musk of the Orient.’ “I’ll treasure it.” 

Demora just wrinkled her nose when she sniffed the stopper and stuck out her tongue, pantomiming vomit.

Uhura got a homemade square potholder, the kind kids wove on a little square loom with pegs and loops of ragged cloth. “Thank you so much, Aijeba,” she cooed, pressing it to her chest and beaming at him. Never mind that McCoy knew personally she’d never gone within three feet of a stove in her life. “I’ll treasure it forever because it comes from you.”

That seemed to be the consensus: horrible gifts that would be treasured due to their origins. Cake and ice cream in quantities that would require all of the adults to spend several days working out in the ship’s gym. Sparkling grape juice the little kids wouldn’t drink because it stung their undeveloped palates. The occasional spill, the occasional fight, the occasional temper tantrum. Mercifully the grape juice wasn’t red, but the carpet would still never be the same. 

Through it all Joanna presided like a queen-- helping calm overstressed, cranky children who were starting to grow tired of this new and inexplicable situation, who wanted nothing more than to go home. Serving cake, assisting the yeomen and the nurses in cleanup and recycling, she shone like a jewel. McCoy watched her with admiration, his heart in his throat, saving her other revelations for future consideration. 

“What are you doing with your life? How’s your mother?” he managed to ask her during a quiet moment as the cake was being eaten. 

“I’m starting medical school next month. She’s fine-- gracefully plowing right through anybody who disagrees with her at work. She’s still got Daddy Clay wrapped around her pinky finger,” Joanna laughed softly. 

“She was always good at both those things,” McCoy said, a little wistful. “I’m proud of you.” He gazed across the room to where Jim hovered next to a wall, fingering the awful little lumpy, blue-glazed ashtray David had reluctantly given him. He wore a stunned, infatuated look on his face as he looked at his son. David was oblivious to Jim’s obvious emotion, wrapping himself around an enormous portion of cake in a manner more reminiscent of a python than a human. _Like father like son, indeed._

“This is for you, daddy.” Joanna handed him a neatly wrapped flat square packet. He tore into it and discovered a professional studio holograph featuring her sitting with noticeably older versions of Leonard, Jim, and Spock ranged behind her, all touching her shoulders with fond, paternal pride, their expressions soft with love. “I made Trelane let me bring a picture of our family so you’ll remember.” 

“I couldn’t forget you, punkin.” Leonard put the holograph face-down on the table and drew her close roughly and kissed her hair. “You’re the real gift.”

“They’ll come around eventually.” She gave him a mischievous grin so like his own it nearly broke his heart. “Or maybe I should say _you_ will.” 

McCoy just harrumphed at her and subsided, content to sit back and fill his eyes and heart with the shining presence of his daughter.

The day felt far too short-- and now that they knew when the visit would end, the other Enterprise crewmen seemed to think so as well. Everywhere Leonard looked, they were seizing the chance to hover close to their unfamiliar progeny, sneaking holos, exchanging a few quiet words on important things, or tucking messages into children’s pockets for future family members. 

In the end, Joanna led the children onto the transporter in orderly shifts, supervising the beam-out with confidence: to settings and coordinates specified by Trelane. The transporter powered up on its own, humming a deeper note than usual.

“It’s using an incredible amount of power. But it’s not drawing from our systems or our engines,” Scotty fretted, hovering over the machinery that was, apparently, the closest thing to an offspring he would have in this lifetime. 

The process went smoothly, and Joanna prepared to take her spot on the platform with the last group, beaming back at the command crew. She gave Leonard a final soft kiss on the cheek before stepping up to go. “See you on the flip side,” she said, and dematerialized, leaving them standing alone and a little forlorn behind the control panel with Scotty. 

Leonard sneaked a glance at Spock, who was looking at Jim, who was looking at McCoy and smirking a little.

“Our visitors have given us all a great deal to consider,” Spock said placidly.

“Indeed they have, Mr. Spock.” Jim’s eyes twinkled at him, and McCoy shifted, embarrassed, as Spock’s gaze moved to find him and the Vulcan raised an eyebrow. Resolutely he refused to look away, meeting the challenge head-on.

Jim just chuckled and steered them out together, one hand on each man’s shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Dif-tor heh smusma, sa-mekh:_ Live long and prosper, father  
>  _Faux pas:_ False step  
>  _Sochya eh dif:_ Peace and long life  
>  _Ta’al:_ Vulcan hand gesture of greeting (separation between 3rd and 4th fingers)


End file.
